Think Again

Think Again teaches us the power of being humble about what we don’t know, how to recognize blind spots in our thinking, and how to more effectively enlist people for our cause, thus bolstering our intelligence, persuasiveness, and self-awareness.

Most of us are completely unaware of the things we aren’t good at. In fact, sometimes we even think we are good at the things we are the worst at. For example, studies have found that people who score lowest on logical reasoning and sense of humour tests also have the most overinflated perception of their abilities in these areas.

Making matters worse, someone who falsely believes they’re good at something is less likely to try to improve in that skill. A study of emotional intelligence found that those participants with the lowest emotional intelligence scores were the least likely to want help in improving their emotional intelligence.

So what can we do about this apparent blind spot? Stay humble. If you start admitting that you don’t know everything, you will open up to learning new things. You’ll become more competent. Also, humility and confidence aren’t mutually exclusive qualities.

Confidence is all about self-belief, while humility means you are willing to examine your own methods. Successful people have both. They are confident in their ability to succeed eventually but humble enough to evaluate whether or not they are using the best methods to achieve that goal.

Grant tells the story of Black musician Daryl Davis. In 1983, he started talking to Ku Klux Klan members to convince them to change their minds about race. Since then, he has persuaded many to rethink their beliefs and leave. One of these former KKK members even asked Davis to be a godfather to his daughter. As Davis’s story illustrates, one of the best ways to change people’s prejudiced beliefs is to show them how arbitrary the beliefs are. When Davis talked to the Klan members, he realized many only had white supremacist beliefs because their family did. He encouraged them to think about the roots of why they believed what they did. From there, they began to question racism and, in the end, often changed their minds about it. Grant also saw this phenomenon when he studied animosity between Yankees and Red Sox fans. Both sides typically believed the other group to be arrogant, aggressive, and unpleasant. In an experiment, Grant told the baseball fans to write an essay about how random some of the reasons they hated the other side were. He also had them think that if they were born into a different family, they probably would like whatever team they supported. After writing the essays, fans on both sides realised that…